Clash of colors

THE city’s dumpster at Zayas in Upper Carmen is going to explode.

As early as 2009, if I am not mistaken, the Environmental Management Board sent a communiqué to City Hall warning that the methane build-up in the city dump has reached alarming levels. Local academics agree.

While the yellow-led City Hall and the purple-dominated City Council indulge themselves in political intramurals, the city dumpster exploding becomes less of a probability and more of an eventuality.

The dumpster needs to be transferred. Let me respectfully remind the characters holding office near Ysalina Bridge that your loyalties to your political affiliations must not precede your loyalties to the people you have sworn to serve and protect.

If, nay, when the dumpster explodes and kills hundreds in its wake, will it even matter if somebody’s “report” was late in reaching the desks of City Council which appears to be hell-bent on crippling the present administration?

Whether the executive or the legislative act on this first, please remember my dear public servants, that Kagay-anons’ welfare are in your hands.

Stop this bickering and politicking and start earning your keep.
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I and other media people discussed the dumpsite problem over bottles of beer on Monday night. When a broadcaster said city hall’s failure to close down the dumpsite and open up a new one was the fault of the chairman of the city council’s committee on energy because he hasn’t been calling for a meeting to tackle the problem, and because the City Local Environment and Natural Resources (Clenro) hasn’t submitted a detailed report, a newspaperman who hasn’t taken anything for hours except beer snapped, and at the top of his voice protested: “No, no, no, no, no… That is bulls@#t! Imagine yourself in the middle of the city dump. It goes off and starts to burn. You die! You die! You mean you will accept the reason that you died because some lousy committee out there didn’t call for a meeting and because the Clenro didn’t submit a report? That is just unacceptable.

“A competent city council would immediately replace the chairman of that committee or since it is higher and more powerful than the committee, it may immediately replace the chairman as it wishes. It can even call for a meeting everyday and tackle the problem until the wee hours if it wants to.

“A good councilor would also take the initiative, and, if needed, go to the Clenro or the mayor’s office to demand or beg for data or whatever it is that is needed. This is an emergency, for crissakes! People’s lives are at stake. So do not give me the bull@#t that people died because the committee chairman is lazy or because the Clenro didn’t submit a report. That’s pure crap. You die, buddy! You die! People will die! And that is your flimsy reason?

“But it really looks like, they want disaster to happen. It seems that they want people to die so that they could play the blame game. And this could be to the political advantage of any of the two warring political groups. It could work either way––all at the expense of the people they’re supposed to be protecting.”

The broadcaster paused, had a change of mind, and told the newspaperman: “You are correct….”
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I’d like to give a shout-out to my maninoy —Reuben Canoy. Your “perspective” on pyramiding scheme was so informative as well as entertaining.

I didn’t know that running for Congress has become one of the quickich schemes in the Philippines.